Friday, December 6, 2013

Re-post: Stranger Than Fiction

Please forgive the many "I, me" and "my" references in this post. Readers will understand the apology as they get clued in to the subject.

Assuming that most of Peter's readers have never heard of me, let me tell you all a bit about myself. I have been blogging under the nom de guerre 'baldilocks' for just a bit over ten years. The main topic has been conservative politics, but I will talk about most anything that strikes my fancy or torques me off...or at least I used to. Haven't felt so much like blogging since November 2008.

I am an Air Force retiree and, most recently, a novelist. Until the end of last year, my primary concern was the well-being of my great-aunt. She passed away in December of 2012 at age 91. A good, long life.

But there are some other things about me that readers may find...interesting.

I was born in August of 1961.

My biological father is Kenyan and of the Luo tribe; my mother is American.

My parents met when both were attending the same American college.

My parents divorced when I was very young; afterward, my father returned to Kenya.

For half of my childhood, I was raised by older relatives of my mother.

My mother suffered from ovarian cancer.

My maternal grandmother died in 2008.

One of my half-sisters is nine years younger than I am. She is married to a man of a different race than she.

I am left-handed.

Some of these things may seem familiar, if innocuous. But one thing it certain: all of these things are also part of the biography of a man named Barack Hussein Obama. And some of the dissimilarities have symmetry.

I am a woman.

I am a conservative.

Both of his parents and his step-father are dead. Both of my parents and my step-father are living. (My father, Philip Ochieng, appeared in the documentary, 2016: Obama's America, and was a friend of Barack Obama, Sr.)

I was raised by my great-aunt and great-uncle in the first half of my childhood. President Obama was raised by his grandparents in the last half of his minor years.

Since Barack Obama came on the scene almost ten years ago, I have lived in a low-level state of astonishment and I'm not even talking about the type of president he has turned out to be. (That was predictable to anyone who was paying attention.) I'm talking about the personal facts of both our lives.

Considering his character, the notion that he absconded with my identity has come up in my mind a time or two, but there are things that could not be faked--like the malady that beset both of our mothers. My mother was diagnosed several year after his was.

And, in the years since President Obama was elected, I seen all manner of crazy notions pop up about the Luo tribe.

That the tribe is mostly Arab. (One look at any of us disputes this. The name 'Obama' is Luo, not Arabic. Fun fact: in Dholuo, 'Obama' means 'bent' or 'crooked.')

That the tribe is mostly Muslim. (The Luo are 90% Christian--including me. Most Kenyan Luo are Anglican or Seventh Day Adventist.)

That the tribe is a "communist tribe." (That assertion seemed weird, until I remembered that most of the Africans who were educated in Western countries in the sixties--like Barack Obama, Sr. and Philip Ochieng--were sponsored and well-indoctrinated by the Organized Left. My now very conservative mom says that communists were everywhere when my father was courting her.)

And here's one really crazy notion that the ascent of Barack Hussein Obama has put in motion: that most black American Christians are adherents to the I-deology known as Black Liberation Theology. In reality, the only black American Christians who are even familiar with the tenets of that abomination are the minority who are Catholic. Nothing against our Catholic friends, but it is in that denomination where (insert ethnic group here) liberation theologies have mostly taken root, the fact that President Obama's old "church" is "Protestant" notwithstanding.

But I digress.

What does having a cosmic twin who happens to be the President of the United States and who happens to be systematically destroying that same person's country do for one's psyche? It brings humility and, ironically, it also shows that there is a God and that He does have a "wicked" sense of humor. Joke's on me...and, as it appears, the rest of us.

Here's the important question: which one of us is the Bearded Spock?

I guess that depends on whom you asked. If you were to ask President Obama, he'd get the fictional character confused with the real-life Dr. Spock. And then, you would have your answer.